Krishnamurti Quote of the Day

Bombay, India | March 14, 1948

Existence is action - action at different levels of consciousness. Without action, life is not possible. Action is relationship. In isolation, action is not possible; and nothing can exist in isolation, so relationship is action at different levels of consciousness.

Consciousness, as I have been explaining, is experiencing, naming, and recording. Experiencing is the response to challenge. The challenge is met by conditioning responses. This conditioning is called experience. This experience is termed and thereby put into the frame of reference which is memory. This total process is action. Consciousness is action; without experiencing, terming, recording, there is no action. This process is going on whether one is aware or unaware of it.

Action creates the actor. The actor comes into being when the action has a result and an end in view. If there is no result in action, the actor is not. So, the actor, the action, and the end are a unitary process, a single movement. Action towards a result is will. The desire to achieve an end brings about will, and so the actor comes into being. The actor with his will and the action towards a result are a single process. Though we can break it up and observe them separately, they are one. With these three states we are familiar: the actor, the action, and the result. This is our daily existence. These three make up action which is a process of becoming. Otherwise, there is no becoming. If there is no actor and no action towards an end, there is no becoming.

Our life is a process of becoming, to become at different levels of consciousness. This becoming is strife and pain. Is there an action without this becoming, with its conflict and misery? There is, if there is no actor and no result. Action with an end in view creates the actor. Can there be an action without an end, without a result, and so not giving birth to an actor? For where there is an action with a desire of a result, there the actor is. So, the actor is the source of strife and misery.

Can there be an action without the actor and without seeking a result? Then only, action is not a process of becoming, in which there is confusion, conflict, and antagonism. Action then is not a strife. This state of action is the state of experiencing without the experiencer and the experience. This is simple to understand. Our life is conflict and can one live without conflict? Conflict is disintegrating, bringing wave upon wave of confusion and destruction. Only in creative happiness can there be a revolutionary, regenerating state.